WEST HAGBOURNE
West
Hagbourne is a small village in the south of the county
at the foot of the Berkshire Downs. The centre of the village
has the usual interesting period houses, some of them
thatched, and a village pond. The pond is complete
with ducks and is either full of water or dry depending
on the time of year.
The house at York Farm is architecturally important as
it is one of the earliest complete timber-framed houses
to survive in England. The oldest part of the house is
thought to date from 1264/65. The house was modernised
in C17 or C18 and, although this destroyed many of the
early features, much of the original timber framing remains.
A
paved footpath links
West Hagbourne with the village of East
Hagbourne, about a half mile to the east the other
side of a disused railway embankment.
The village pub, the Horse and Harrow, is on the extreme
western edge of the village and was one of the very first
pubs owned by the Abingdon brewery, Morlands, when John
Morland started brewing in West Ilsley, a nearby village
in Berkshire. Morlands brewery in Abingdon is sadly now
a housing estate and the company itself lives on in name
only, having been taken over by another company in 2000.
West
Hagbourne is about two miles south
of Didcot just off the A417.